


Royal Flush

by Lizardlicks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Breeding, Bulges and Nooks, But nothing bad actually happens, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Oviparous Trolls, References to a bunch of sensitive topics, Suicidal Thoughts, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:36:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7774576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/pseuds/Lizardlicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Eight is old for your first fertile cycle.  Most queens hit theirs sometime after seven, sometimes a little earlier.  It’s sooner for lowbloods, onset delaying longer the higher in the spectrum trolls go.  Until it comes for you, you keep this dim, glimmering hope that maybe you’re a dud.  A rare, special seatroll queen that’s as fertile as rock.  You don’t know what would happen if that turned out to be true; Dualscar isn’t a person who likes his plans interfered with, but at least then maybe he’d see you as something more than a pawn.  A bargaining chip."</p><p>Eridan takes his destiny into his own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Royal Flush

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of warning tags up there and it probably doesn't cover everything that could be warned for. But! Most of it doesn't actually happen in the fic, it's just talked about as things that _could_ happen. If you're worried about running into something that's going to upset you in the course of events, rest assured it's probably not going to happen, but if you're sensitive to the mentions or discussions of any of the topics in the tags, might be best to be cautious. Enjoy!

You find out your best friend is a king in the most mundane, anticlimactic way.  Sol cracked a joke about “getting tied up” with him.  Kar turned dark, red blood rushing under gray skin, and hissed like a tea kettle.  He planted his hand on Sol’s obnoxious, giggling face, and pushed him backward off the concrete retainer wall, onto the grass behind it.  Daffy mustard blood kept right on snickering while Nep had to keep Kar from climbing over the wall and smothering him with his jacket, and Kan just rolled her eyes. 

And you.  You froze.  You locked up like a baby antlerbeast under the gaze of a hungry slobberhound while everyone ignored you.  It wasn’t fear so much as processing overload.  Kar.  Karkat Vantas.  Mutantblood spawn out of a mutantblood queen, who’s clade is nothing nobler than Jade in hue, all queens, and jacks, and cullbait for drones the lot of them.  And yet... 

It’s not as if you’re unfamiliar with law of averages throwing a curve ball sometimes.  Far from it.  You got _personal_ experience there.  And it ain’t like mutants are all that predictable to begin with.  Back in your sire’s youth, before the humans got involved, off spectrum anomalies like them wouldn’t have made it far out of the egg, but now they pop up here and there, bold as you please. 

But Kar, he doesn’t _act_ like a king.  He doesn’t carry himself right for it, all hunched shoulders and defensive scowling.  Kar is fussy and self-effacing.  He gets loud, and aggressive, but never _pushy_.  He’s got the broody cluckbeast thing down perfect, and the funny part is you’re sure he hasn’t noticed.  He’s tiny to boot.  If you’d been asked before this, you would have pegged him as a jack, no doubt, too bold to be a queen, too careful for a king.  Maybe it’s the mutant thing that set him apart.  Or maybe it’s that your experience with kings are all more richly blooded.  You’re so used to modeling one kind you’ve never thought of there being others.  

You, on the other hand, can toss you horns and look down the tilt of your nose as easy as walking from one street corner to the next.  It’s a clever lie, of course, but one you’ve cultivated on purpose.  No one would make the mistake that you were anything less than a young king coming to age.  You’re still a seadweller, with all the class and grooming that comes with it.  Dualscar made sure of that, even if he always planned on tossing you to whoever offered the strongest position for social  gain when your first heat came.  Wouldn’t do to have a rare violet gem bringing shame on the name of Ampora in the concupiscent room, would it.

Now.  Ooooh _now_.  You are thinking about shaming your name, and your ancestors, and every angels forsaken troll that ever crawled out of the sea.  You are thinking about it very hard.  See, the thing is, you never had options before.  You never had a choice.  Your destiny was decided for you the day you wiggled out of your cocoon.  Except that now it isn’t.

 

* * *

 

About three seasons ago you celebrated your eighth sweep.  Maybe celebrated ain’t the right word.  It was a milestone.  There was a party.  The usual highblood kind of gala, where everyone dresses in stiff clothes with lots of flash, and buttons, and piping, and they all smile with too many teeth, and open, challenging stances.  There were introductions, and reintroductions.  Heads of different families presented themselves before you, and your sire would say, “Ah, how good to see you again,” in different ways such that he could have meant he was actually glad to see one asshole or another was still kicking around, or he was idly wondering how exactly certain morons still managed to draw air or water.  You nodded in the right places, and made the right sort of agreeable noises, and for the most part you never bothered with remembering faces or names.  If they would ever be important to you, you’d learn it soon enough.  They didn’t mean anything.  All they wanted was to win favor with Dualscar 

A bit more than an hour and some in, after just enough time had passed for most everyone on the guest list to have arrived and settled, Cro- who’d been standing to your right looking even more bored and put-upon than you felt for most of the night- had nodded toward the entryblock and waggled his eyebrows at you.  You didn’t look at who’d just come in, suitably late enough that everyone would be there to behold her presence.  You didn’t have to, you knew exactly who it was.  Dualscar stepped forward to accept her hand with a kiss and kneeled.  You sank lower into your seat, trying to will yourself to melt into the gaudily carved wooden frame and disappear.   

Her Imperious Condescension hardly spared Dualscar a glance.  They exchanged some pointless customary greeting while he groveled, and her eyes skipped right over the entertainmentblock to lock onto you.  She swept- there’s no other word for it, the way she gathered up the attention of the whole event and pulled it right along with her- down the length of the room, and paused before you, smile curving her face in a way that could have been beautiful if it wasn’t pants shittingly terrifying. 

“Don’t you look all grown up,” she cooed, “Look good enough to eat.”  And then her coldiron fingers curled around your chin and she leaned in until her lips brushed your fin. “In fact, maybe I whale.” 

Your guts went cold and hot together as she chuckled and patted your cheek.  “Chum up, b-day buoy. You look like you swallowed a bad oyster!” she admonished.  Then she flounced away to mingle, and you were left forgotten, and queasy by her, by your sire, by the whole damn party as everyone tripped and drooled all over themselves trying to gain an audience or a favor from the self declared Empress of Trolls. 

At least you were able to sneak out a bit early because no one was paying attention to you any longer.  You’d been able to bribe Cro to cover for you by saying you’d put in a good word for him with the Peixes, and he did enough to keep everyone out of your hair for the rest of the night.  Dualscar still noticed at some point, and scolded you the night after, but fuck that soggy old eel. 

In the dark quiet of your respiteblock you found space enough to breathe and let go of the painfully twisting knot in your chest, then opened your husktop.  A trollian ping lit up your notification box,  flashing soothing gray in a sea of other colors. 

CG: HAPPY WRIGGLING DAY, FIN FUCK.  I DIDN’T GET YOU SHIT BECAUSE I’M BROKE AS DIRT, AND YOU PROBABLY BOUGHT SOMETHING TEN TIMES BETTER JUST TO TAKE A CRAP IN. 

Somehow that was the best gift anyway.

 

* * *

 

Eight is old for your first fertile cycle.  Most queens hit theirs sometime after seven, sometimes a little earlier.  It’s sooner for lowbloods, onset delaying longer the higher in the spectrum trolls go.  Until it comes for you, you keep this dim, glimmering hope that maybe you’re a dud.  A rare, special seatroll queen that’s as fertile as rock.  You don’t know what would happen if that turned out to be true; Dualscar isn’t a person who likes his plans interfered with, but at least then maybe he’d see you as something more than a pawn.  A bargaining chip. 

You know whose hive you’ll be traded to.  It was a foregone conclusion as soon as she sent Dualscar the first letter, covered in glitter, perfumed, and sealed with a lipstick laden kiss.  You know who will breed you in that hive.  If it was Fef, you think you could be happy.  Fef is kind to the point of folly.  She bleeds sad songs and heartache for the world, and sometimes you think you could be pale for her hurt, or pitch for her stupidity.  Once you might have even claimed flushed.  Meenah you could deal with.  She wouldn’t be gentle, but she’d be fun.  She’s got that dangerous allure going, something like what her sire oozes by simply existing, but she hasn’t grown into it all the way, and it’s all layered on protection for a still squishy core. 

No.  It won’t be either of them.  You know.   

Cronus doesn’t get it.  You tried talking to him about it when you were both younger, but to him the idea of spending the rest of his life never having to think about anything but getting pailed stupid whenever the mood strikes sounds like the best thing ever.   

“It’s not like you even have to bother with the grubs,” he’d said, “they got nanny drones for that.”

You had tripped and stumbled over finding words for the way it made your digestionsac want to crawl into your shoes.  Nothing ever got past the twisting knot in your chest, and you eventually stopped talking about it.  You stopped talking about it to anyone.  You quietly shelved the idea, and started avoiding it as much as possible until you turned seven and the heads of the highblood hives started watching you like a hawkfish.   

Befriending a cadre of lowblood rabble had been a complete accident.  There was a hemoanonymous loud mouth that haunted the same movie review forums you did.  He liked sappy schmaltz, romcoms, but he ventured into other genres if the plots had good enough hooks and the characters had good (read: shippable) chemistry.  He liked to argue.  You liked to rile him up and watch him go off on tangents, and he liked to poke holes into your theories.  Banter turned to gossip, turned to a weird sort of mutual bonding.  You griped about family, and schoolfeeds, and quadrants, and eventually learned that he didn’t live too far.  On the mainland, yes, but less than an hour by scuttlebus from the port. 

And one day you got the brilliant idea that maybe you could take advantage of some highblood perks while you were still a young, free-spirited troll without duties and obligations. Dualscar wasn’t opposed to it, surprisingly, though he did demand a chaperone.  That wasn’t too bad.  Darkleer was good at melting into the background. Getting Kar to agree to it was a different matter, but dangling a private advanced screening of a highly anticipated feature over his head was too good of bait.  His caveat was that he could bring some of his clade along, to which you agreed, and that’s how you ended up meeting Karkat, Nepeta, Sollux, and Kanaya all in the same evening.  It turns out the world is smaller than you thought, because one of Darkleer’s spawn was quadranted to Nep, and from there introductions went pretty smoothly all around. 

You didn’t expect getting to know them would be so easy.  You never imagined you’d fit so perfectly into the fold of a _lowblood_ clan.  You never thought you had been missing out on actual hatefriends until just a few weeks later when you found yourself laughing, joking and teasing with ease.   

For most of your wigglerhood, your companions had been the other highbloods’ spawn dumped into a room together to wait while the adults did things as seemingly mysterious as important.  Eq had been stiff, awkward, and quickly forgotten.  You don’t know what Nep sees in him. Vris had been a terror, and you had clashed right out of gate.  Her challenge was thrilling whenever you crossed paths, but Mindfang was fickle, and her visits unpredictable.  You both soon grew bored and disinterested as you and Vris grew up more apart than together.  Gam was an even rarer playmate.  The Makaras had not been on good terms with your family for many generations, and the times that the two heads met peacefully usually involved an auspistice and a lot of paperwork being signed. 

Feferi. You could love her.  Did for a while, but that hurt too much when you came to understand what your place in her life would be.  When you were small, you made promises to each other in hushed whispers, and held hands.  That came closest to what you felt now for Karkat and his clanmates.  Almost, but not quite.  It was too big then to wrap your pan around, but now it seems simpler.  Like a puzzle that you finally found the key piece to, and suddenly the picture is clear.  It’s safe, and warm, and strong as iron, not fragile like glass, but something just as beautiful. 

That’s probably the thing the decides you.  That pocket of peace you feel when you’re near him, the sense that nothing can get to you through it.  That’s why you pack a duffel bag full of water, snacks, and a spare change of clothes three seasons after your eighth wriggling day, hide it behind your recuperacoon, then settle in to wait.

 

* * *

 

You wake up feeling feverish and prickly all over, your skin sensitive and crawling.  A shiver worms its way through your limbs.  Halfway to your ablutionblock to wash off the sopor, the realization settles in your belly like lead weight.  It’s early evening still, the sun hasn't quite set and the hive isn’t yet awake.  You should have time. 

The spray from the shower head does nothing to sooth you, but it's nice for washing off your scent along with the slime.  You heard that kings can smell when a queen is in heat from hundreds of feet away.  You really don't want to test that, at least not before you're safe at Karkat's hive.  You hope you'll be safe there anyway. 

Toweling off turns into an entirely new experience than before when you wipe down your belly.  Lead turns to gold, to electric current ricocheting through your bones.  You gasp, barely manage to jam the first two knuckles of your fist into your mouth to stop the sound as your arch against the pressure.  Oh god, oh fucking _hell_ , that was just a light touch, and it’s wrecking you!  Your legs tremble against your will as you fight to keep them closed.  How are you ever going to make it out of the hive in this condition?  You won't even be able to put on pants.  You have to fight against the need to touch yourself.  It would be so nice just to have something down there, filling up your nook, but if you start experimenting now, you might not stop in time. 

"Fuck.  C'mon, I can do this.  Ignore it."  You drop the towel.  The deep purple stain soaking into it is immediately obvious, and you cringe.  Yeah, can't leave that there, anyone who sees it will know.  You have to mince all the way over to the hamper because of the pulsing heat that flares anytime you so much as move.  This is going to be a bigger pain in the ass than you thought.  You bury the towel as far down under the other dirty clothes in the hamper as it will go, and throw some clean linens from the cupboard on top for good measure. 

Pants are out.  You still have some nice skirts, though.  You always liked the way they swished, and Dualscar was indulgent on a lot of fronts.  Maybe Karkat will like them?  But then again, if this goes right he'll be a bit too distracted to notice.  Other than keeping a purple theme, it doesn't go very well with the hoodie you pull on, but you want to hide your fins.  You're going to be vulnerable enough, taking a risk crossing inland while entering a fertile cycle, you don't need to give anyone extra incentive to target you.  You've double and triple checked you bag's supplies before now, but you riffle through it one last time just to be safe.  Spare clothes, drinks and food, sopor patches, a pre-loaded universal card with about five hundred dollars equivalent in human currency... you hope it's enough to cover for anything you don't expect.  There's only so much you can plan for, the rest you'll just have to improvise on.

 

* * *

 

Getting out of the hive turns out to be less challenging than you feared.  You’re thankful at least that your body picked the moment it did to flip all its switches to ‘fuck me, or fuck off.’  Everything is in between shifts.  The few humans that work for your sire are tired, and don’t know any better anyway.  They wave distractedly to you when you pass, and otherwise pay you no mind.  Most of the trolls are still asleep save for the kitchen staff.  You give that section of hive a wide berth, and find your way down to the docks without being delayed.  There’s one good thing about being an Ampora scion, and that’s that no one dares question you if they have a desire to keep their job. 

Taking a shuttle boat doesn’t prove to be hard either.  The mainland docks are one of the destinations already pre-programmed, and you simply select it on the screen, then settle in while the navigational computer takes over.  The salt spray and cool evening air feel amazing, so much better than the shower did.  You catch your hands pulling up your hoodie before you actually take it off, but now that the thought is there, it’s suddenly much too warm.  You want it gone.  You want everything touching your skin that isn’t more skin gone, you just want to bare yourself and feel the night sliding over your fevered body.  The water, your ancestral home, tempts you.  You dip a hand over the side and try to will the cold splashing soaking through your sleeve to be enough.

 

* * *

 

It’s not enough.  You’re shivering by the time your reach the mainland, but it’s not from a chill.  Holy Gl'bgolyb’s tentacles, your schoolfeeds did _not_ prepare you for this.  Your head is full of crawling things that work their way down you spine to your fingertips and toes, setting off twitches under the skin.  ‘ _A bit more sensitive_ ,’ your pretty, purple ass, your whole being is completely over sensitized!  You pace back and forth in front of the bus stop as you wait, and hug your arms to your chest to keep them from wandering.  Thank fuck you’re the only one here, because humans would be calling some kind of well meaning authority, and trolls would... they could do anything at all.  You squeak in the back of your throat, because your stomach and nook just simultaneously clenched at the thought. 

The shuttle finally comes around the corner, a normal human bus instead of a scuttlebug.  You hitch your bag higher up on your shoulder, step up onto the deck and swipe your card.  The reader deducts two dollars, and the vehicle operator pulls the lever that closes the doors behind you.  Humans blink tiredly at you, and for one terrifying second your stomach drops, because there’s a pretty teal thing full of so many piercings she could double as a lightning rod sitting in the seat closest to the door, but she smells about as appetizing as the protein bar you managed to wolf down in the boat earlier.  You thank whatever spirit of luck has your name tonight she’s just a jack, and that you aren’t going to do anything stupid like sit on a complete stranger’s lap and get pailed on a public transport. 

When the bus lurches forward, it nearly throws you off your already shaky feet, and you flop gracelessly into the closest empty seat.  Everything is too much to process right now, so you close your eyes, and curl into a grubball, trying to ignore the way your stomach flops around, and how the road and engine vibrations buzz through your bones, and right into your nook.

 

* * *

 

It takes an hour to cross town.  You manage to doze some, but your traitor body is intent on feeding you every last point of physical input until you want to tear your horns off.  You try eating another protein bar and drinking some water.  The water helps, but only a little.  The protein bar sits in your digestivesac like a rock. 

At some point the teal jack leaves, and you find that oddly comforting and terrifying at once.  You think you end up crying at least twice, quiet simperings that you hide in your sleeve while you curl up and die inside from embarrassment.  Fuck hormones, fuck being in heat, fuck this stupid body.  No seriously, someone fuck it, please, you want this to be over.  No other trolls board.  The humans that come and go at each stop mostly ignore you.  Some of them look worried, or sympathetic, and some of them scoot around you leaving as much space as possible when they pass as if you might be contagious, but no one talks to you.  It’s the city, most everyone knows when to mind their own damn business, which is pretty much always. 

The bus is nearly empty when it pulls up to your stop.  Last one on the circuit, after this it will loop back around, and go back into town.  It hisses and rattles when it departs, and leaves you standing alone by a heavily tagged bench, under stars that are just starting to peek past the blue-green straggles of sunlight.  You can smell the night so clearly it translates to taste; rotten apple fall, brown grass and dust, field smoke in the distance that fills your sinuses, and makes you dizzy.  You drink from your water bottle again, and stow it in the bag. 

Karkat’s hive is at the end of a cul-de-sac, and you find it darkly amusing that it sounds like the word cull is in that name.  It’s a mixed neighborhood, trolls and humans, all the ones that don’t quite fit in with the usual ebb and flow, but refuse to quietly fade away.  The street is quiet, but alive; someone a block over is playing their music too loud, and there’s a couple arguing on their porch.  You flick your fins down when a neighbor’s dog runs up to bark at you through the fence as you pass, and do it again when the crunch of gravel under your shoes sounds far too loud in your ears. 

You stop before you walk all the way up to the door of his hive.  This part you hadn’t really planned through.  Do you just... do you knock?  Ask if Karkat can come out to pail?  What if it’s a king other than him that answers the door?  You know what if, you know you won’t stop them from doing whatever they please.  The mental image of getting bent over their kitchen table for the whole hive to partake of like a human winter festival feast flits through your pan, and oh god that’s as hot as it is terrifying. You’re forced to swallow before you choke on your own saliva.  You push your hand down the waistband of your skirt and squeeze your sheath, gasping at how tender and slick it feels with your bulge heavy but still hidden. 

Fuck, okay, that’s right out.  You need to talk to Karkat.   _Just_ Karkat. 

There’s a route up to the roof of his hive’s garage. You feel halfway like one of those incredibly shitty ameture parkour enthusists that make terrible Trolltube videos of themselves awkwardly rolling over car hoods and knocking over trash cans, only you don’t actually knock anything over.  From the top of a trash bin, you can stand on the wood slat fence, and from there you can hook the roof of the garage with your hands and pull yourself up.  You hate the way that little bit of effort leaves you feeling overheated, but there’s no helping it.  You take a moment to catch your breath, then crawl over to the house side and reach out to tap against Karkat’s window. 

Of course he doesn’t answer.  Of course his room is dark and you’re the dumbest idiot that ever hatched.  He’s probably left already, doing whatever it is he does on any given night.  Why did you think this would work?  Why did you think any of this would work, you never had a choice, and you’ve been lying to yourself about how you’ve been so clever, making up plans like some kind of movie spy.  They’ll find you sitting on their garage, and call Dualscar to come get you, and then you’ll be thrown in Her Imperious Condescension’s pail room with the rest of her toys- and- and- _FUCK_. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.  Fuck everything, just f-” you scrub your face with your sleeves and hitch, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as the tears spill over in full force.  It hurts your chest.  It hurts your stomach, and aches down into your groin in slow, unpleasant throbs, forced arousal conflicting with the sudden implosion of despair.  For a very long second you consider simply throwing yourself off the roof and denying anyone or anything else anymore power over you in one last act, but it’s not high up enough.  You’d just hurt yourself, probably in a really embarrassing and stupid way, and then you’d have to sit in an emergency room and make everything worse.  
  
Then the window slides open.  "The fuck is going- Eridan?  What the hell?"  
  
It's Kar, Karkat, leaning out and looking at you with the biggest eyes you've seen, still sleep rumpled and cranky as ever, but scrunching his face up in worry.  You can't even talk right.  When you try, all that comes out is a broken squawk.  He reaches for you, hanging out the window with one hand out and the other braced so he doesn't topple to the ground from the second floor.  You practically lunge for him.  Have to swing your bag so the weight of it carries you forward into him instead of pulling you backward into the ten-ish feet of open air before a hard ground, at the same time he close his grip on your hoodie and heaves back.    
  
Karkat is strong for his size, but he can’t hold you up under that much momentum.  He goes down with your larger bulk over top of him.  His fingers are in your hair, tightening on your clothes and he's churring soothing noises against your throat, while you blubber useless nonsense.  
  
" _Kar-_ " is the first actual word you can make work right, just before you breathe in too deep and taste his scent.  It's like being punched in the gut with a muscle relaxant.  His smell is sweet, a little heady with a sharp tang that leaves a taste in your mouth you can’t place.  You forgot that fertile queens can smell a king's pheromones too.  You take a another deep breath, and then a third because the first two left you swaying where you kneel, light headed and buzzing pleasantly.  All the panic dies to a background simmer.  You melt against him, nuzzling against his neck and scenting him.  
  
Karkat's noises have changed to something deeper.  It pings along your synapses in a feedback loop of "yes," and "more" and "mine".  When his muscles coil beneath you to flip you on your back, you go without resistance.  Nose to nose, you can see the way his pupils have gone wide.  His eyelids flutter beautifully, dark against dust, against gold and crimson.  
  
"H-hey.  Let's.  Stop for a second here.  Put the brakes on for fucking time out."  He shivers, tongue darting out before he swallows hard. You want to press you mouth and teeth against his throat to taste more of him.  "Talk to me, what the hell is going on with you."  
  
Fucking, _words_ .  You can't use them right, they come out raspy and your voice cracks hideously.  "I need.  I'm in heat.  Kar, _please_ !"  
  
"Yeah, I figured that part out."  He sits up and groans, rubbing his face.  You are very suddenly aware of the fact that all he's wearing are boxers and a tank top.  It would be easy to roll him back under you and slide right down onto his bulge.  You whimper.  
  
"I want this with you.  With _you_ .  Just once, god, if you-"  your voice sticks again.  "If you don’t want me, or- or a grub after I don't care, just let me have this.  Let me choose."  That's a fucking lie, you care a whole lot.  You don't know what you'll do with yourself and a grub without a king.  You don't know what you would do at all without Karkat, and his clade, and the feeling of home they leave in you like no place else, but you're sure if you stop now and do nothing you'll die.  It feels like you would straight up die, now that you're this close.    
  
"Oh, fuck, Eridan."  Karkat wipes your cheek under the corner of your eye, and it takes you a second to realize you're still crying.  He cups your face and bumps his forehead against yours before he presses a succession of soft kisses down your nose, your mouth, and chin.  
"C'mere.  I've got you, come here."  
  
You pull him back for another kiss.  His fingers are soft, warm brands on your cheeks, tracing against the bottom-most edge of your fins.  It lights crackling static through your veins.  He doesn't hesitate to lick into your mouth when you offer it.  Your legs fall open at the same time as your mouth.  His weight is settled right over your sheath, pressing down and keeping your thickening bulge trapped while it builds up a fire in your core.  You aren't expecting to come when he shifts, but he does, and you gasp as the sudden unsheathing of your bulge sends pleasure rippling up into your belly.  This skirt is ruined.  
  
"Nnnh, holy shit!  More!"  That didn't even begin to sate you.  It just left you wet, wanting.  Karkat makes some kind of affirming noise, but then he's sliding off you, leaving you cold and bare.  You snatch at his shirt desperately.  He growls deep and twist-shimmies backward until the shirt comes off.  Wow, yes, that's a good idea.  Less clothes is good.  You should have thought of that sooner.    
  
You sit up and grab the hem of your hoodie, start to pull it off.  Karkat's hands move against your thighs as it comes up over your head and leaves you blind to what he's doing.   He pushes your skirt up, slides his hands up and down the bared skin leaving you chirping encouragement and momentarily too distracted to remember the rest of the "taking off clothes" mechanics.  Just as you get it sorted out enough to get past your horns, his hands fall on the inside of your thighs and push them apart, and he bows his head.  
  
Full thought process shutdown follows after his tongue parting the folds of your nook.  You fall back in a boneless flop, keening like a wounded thing, arms still trapped over your head.  Holy fuck, oh god fucking shit damn it, that feels so _good_ !  He makes the most satisfied sound you have ever heard, like your taste pleases him, like he's lapping ambrosia in the form of your slurry.  You echo his moan with your own, arching until your nook presses against his mouth.  He's more than happy to oblige.  Enthusiastic, even.  He licks you deep, wet noises of his slurp and swallow of your previous spill pushing you far out over the edge, and he keeps going even after you give him a new one.  
  
You're shaking when he stops.  You feel him stretch out beside you and cup your face again, turning your head toward him.  You have to force your eyes open, you didn't know you had been clenching them shut that hard.  "Do you want to stop?"  His chin is painted in your color.  It runs in thin rivulets down the hollow of his throat.    
  
"No," your reply is wobbly.  You can feel your arms starting to tremble under the strain of being stuck in one position.  He croons soft, a flushed noise, while helping you finish tugging your hoodie off, and then you mop his face with it. "Break... might be a good idea.  Got water in my bag."  
  
"Yeah.  Okay."  He has to stretch over you to reach it.  You lick his collarbone and he rewards you with a startled chirp.    
  
You were made for water, but even so, you have never found yourself this desperately wanting of it.  He hands you a bottle, and you tip it straight up, nearly chug the whole thing in one go.  Karkat passes you a second, and that one gets more on you than in you, but that feels nice too.  You don't feel any more clear headed though.  The satisfaction of your second orgasm is already wearing off, leaving you empty and sore.  Karkat nearly repeats your performance with his own bottle. When he pulls the bottle away from his lips you replace it with a hard kiss, pulling him flush against you.  
  
Karkat's arms go around your neck.  You hands cups his hips, and you marvel at how perfect and small he is, how he fits into the curve of you precisely.  Some of it is his mutation, you're sure, and good chunk of it is the land/sea divide.  The ocean scales everything up, including trolls.  But part of it is that you were built big to carry young, and he was built to sire them.  You can certainly feel the difference in the squirming thickness of his bulge still hidden in his boxers.  It sparks something inside you to think about taking his knot, getting fucked, getting _bred_ .  You want your king's slurry filling you so bad you whine for it.  "Kar, gimme your bulge."  
  
He pauses, almost seems to sway in place, and breathes a shaky sigh.  "You sure, Eridan?"  
  
You nod, bumping his nose with yours.  You want this endless cycle of building tension inside you to go away.  You want him to fix you, you know he can.  You want this.  You want him. You could regret this later but right now you can't exactly remember why.  He nips your lip and growls, playful, possessive.  It takes your breath away.  
  
You wiggle out of the skirt and, yeah, you weren't kidding, it's totally ruined by now.  No one is going to be fooled into thinking the darker stains of your color were original to the pattern.  Kar pulls down his boxers and- oh.  Oh wow.  In spite of all the water you just drank your mouth goes dry.  You were expecting him to be bigger than you in that department, sure.  But.  It's just.  You want to compare it to your wrist.   He practically trills when he squeezes it, and it coils halfway up his arm.  
  
"You still sure?"  He's panting.  You nod again, and he groans.  "Show me."  
  
You lie back and grab your legs under the bend of your knees, presenting your nook all spread for him.  He gasps out a strangled, "fuck," then falls over you.  
  
He slides in easier than you expected, shock bolting up from your tailbone to your pan even as you sting and pulse around his girth.  There's so much of him, he pushes far deeper than your own half-hearted exploration with your fingers could have ever hoped.  There's some resistance, and a dim memory from your basic pailing school feeds echos back parts of anatomy: _shameglobes, seedflap, genesac_ \-  you don't know which parts he's fucking right now, you just know you don't want him to stop.  
  
He coils, twisting deeper against the tightness, and you cry out, arching your hips into it on instinct.  It's amazing.  He's amazing, your Karkat, your king.  He makes you feel like you've got fault lines ready to shatter into a million pieces spread along your whole body.  You're going to splinter under the pressure of tectonic movement, a slow motion avalanche that's building inside you.  
  
Karkat licks and sucks patterns into your skin while he mounts you, gorgeous, dark bruises you hope will last for weeks.  You want everyone who sees them to seethe with jealousy.  They throb in time with your pulse, and his every thrust.  When you roll your hips back against him, you can feel the tight thrum deep in the back of your nook too.  You lose yourself to that feeling, lose track of time or anything that isn't the constant, low key mantra singing through every nerve ending about how perfect, and right, and good this is.  Why were you ever scared of this?  Sex is what you were made for.    
  
When that resistance gives suddenly against the tip of his bulge with a wrenching shudder that ripples out in waves of pleasure, you almost scream.  Karkat's teeth sink in where he was nibbling at your neck a moment before and he moans so loud you can feel it in your sternum.  Your nook contracts around him, and you didn't think he could reach any deeper, but he thrusts up into you, and grinds, and you can _feel_ him surging into you.  Someplace empty and aching in your pelvis floods with relief.  That feels so good you could cry again.  Probably are, as you croon his name over, and over again between a cascade of curses.  It takes you a moment to realize what you're feeling is his slurry.  And his knot, oh shit that's his knot swelling at the base of his bulge just inside of you.  
  
You think you're falling, the way the world seesaws around you, but that can't be right, because you're still lying on the floor of his respiteblock, tangled up in a mating lock.  Karkat's jaw unlocks, and he licks gently at your stinging skin.  
  
"Shit, I'm so sorry!"  
  
You grunt.  It hardly registers.  The rest of you feels too nice.  That urgent need is... not  gone entirely, but for the moment it's been replaced with quiet contentment.  You haven't felt this at peace since... actually you can't remember ever feeling this calm and relaxed before.  You pet Karkat's hair and rub your jaw against his cheek, reveling in the way it smears his pheromones across your skin and soaks in.  "It's fine, just a little love bite."  
  
"Heh." He smiles, all lopsided and goofy, and your bloodpusher soars.  Karkat never smiles if he can help it.  You did that.  You made it happen.  He stretches up to capture your lips in another kiss then asks, "feeling better?"  
  
"Yeah.  A lot better.  Thank you."  
  
"Mm."  His eyes close.  Is that?  Yeah, he's purring now, a low, rusty sound that carries and fills the room.  This is the best thing ever.  You let your head fall back, and close your own eyes as a matching rumble in your thorax starts playing harmony to his.  You don't even remember sleep pulling you down later when you wake up to your nook growing slick again and Karkat humping lazy against your side.  It doesn't matter at all that you're still half asleep and floating when you take his bulge into you again.  It's too good to stop now.  You aren’t going to give this up, even if the Empress herself were to come to claim you.

**Author's Note:**

> World building notes: I used ABO dynamics, but gave it my own twists There's a lot of differences in how the social dynamics work within the different castes, and I won't get into much of it here, but I wanted to post this for a quick reference.
> 
> Kings: reproductively male. "Alphas"  
> Queens: reproductively female. "Omegas"  
> Jacks: can fall into either category, both, or none. They are not affected by the ramp up of pheromones from the other two classes, but otherwise engage in romantic and familial interactions within a hive as they see fit. "Betas"
> 
> The social rolls of each suit varies by caste. Low blood populations tend to have a higher ratio of queens, mid bloods jacks, and more kings in highblood populations respectively. Hiveholds may have taboos and traditional compositions based on localities and families, but for most modern trolls, any mix of suits across quadrant and non-quadrant arrangements isn't seen as usual. That said, there are plenty of bloodlines that maintain their customs in the face of more progressive outlooks, and clashes happen.


End file.
